North of Normal, West of Weird
by BecauseHeroesNeverDie
Summary: The weirdest thing about Gravity Falls might actually be the people. And the Pines family would have to be the weirdest of those people. -a oneshot collection focusing on the Pines family dynamic-
1. Phone Call

The phone rang.

The sound was shrill against the morning air, shoving the silence of another boring day down a long flight of metaphorical stairs. Stan was starting to wish that he hadn't gotten his phone from a yard sale in the eighties. It was summer, the season of yard sales, he'd have to hook a more modern one at one of the several thousand that were likely to pop up over the course of the summer. It wasn't like he wanted anything fancy. Caller ID would be great. For now he'd have to take his chances. It had better not be a personal call.

"Hey, Uncle Stan," a voice crackled on the other end. Great, a personal call.

"Uh, hey kid, any reason you're calling on the business line?" He said as gruffly as possible, trying not to laugh.

"Business line, eh?" the voice laughed a little.

"So let's keep this business, what do you need?" It wasn't like his nephew to call him. Stan was already listing possibilities in his head and crossing each off quickly. College money? No, he'd graduated years ago. Stan remembered getting an invitation in the mail. He'd written his excuse on a postcard with a picture of a "real live jackalope" on the front. Marriage? No, that had to have been years ago too...

"Well, I was thinking that maybe you could watch the kids for a bit this summer. They won't cause you any trouble and they can help out at the Shack. You know, for free?" His nephew stumbled through a painfully rehearsed-sounding spiel about how helpful his kids were and how it wouldn't cost him anything, just a little time. A lie needs to flow, that was something Stan had learned very early on in his business ventures.

Of course it would cost him to take care of a couple of kids for the summer. Especially if they were teenagers, which he figured they must be by now. He was balancing the numbers in his head. Two kids, he remembered. They could keep each other company, that was good. Food shouldn't be too expensive, but they'd have to work for it. He could set up the attic room for them, or maybe just sweep it a little and they could figure out the rest. It wasn't like he knew what kids liked.

"Hey, I know they haven't seen you in forever, but I think that you'd like them. And it would do them good. They need to do something besides just sit around all summer." The phone emitted a loud crack.

"Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Stan! Ah, sorry, Dad," a young girl half-shouted on the other end, "I heard Dad talking to you and I wanted to say hi!"

The girl immediately started off on an excited stream of chatter, bouncing between sweaters and boys and pigs. Stan heard his nephew's voice point out that there were plenty of pigs in Gravity Falls and that she might meet one there.

"Oh my gosh, that would be the best thing ever! Pigs are so fat!"

"I need to talk to your great uncle again," his nephew informed gently. "Ah, okay! See ya, Grunkle Stan!" She followed that statement up with a strange squeaking noise and a shout of something that sounded curiously like "whomp whomp." It certainly wouldn't be quiet with someone like that girl around.

"Hello, hello?" his nephew was on the phone again, trying in his own passive-aggressive way to get an answer out of Stan.

"I'll take 'em."

"What?"

"Send your kids over. That's what you wanted, right?" A drop-off date was soon planned and circled in black ink on Stan's desk calendar.

"Well, I guess they'd have to take a bus, there's no time that we could take them over... it's kind of expensive but..." "You're paying for that." Stan hung up, because one assault to his wallet was enough for the day. He was back to staring at his office wall. He picked up a sheet of paper, ready to calculate his summer expenses and work around the circumstances to avoid any loss. He found that he really didn't feel like math at the moment, so he just sat in silence with his pen in hand, counting up the little boxes on his calendar.

Twelve more days of silence to go.

_Writer's Woes: Okay, I'm going to switch this with the original first chapter... if that's alright. So I'm kinda bad at writing these characters, but I'm doing this to practice character writing, so hopefully I'll get better? This is a rough draft, thrown together before I have to rush home for Easter. If anyone's reading, I wish you a happy holiday! I have a bunch of chapter ideas, but if you'd like to suggest something, go for it! _

_Stay strange,_

_Hillary_


	2. Four Thirty

Dipper drew the lines closely together, and swept his pencil over the tops. Tightly packed trees and loose clumps of leaves blowing in the wind. Well, they were supposed to be moving. Just a few more pictures and then line them all up, then they'd move. But would the stars twinkle? Would he be able to feel that cool breeze rushing through the paper night?

A sound effect, some music.

That would work.

He stretched, leaning back in his seat. His pencil dropped on the table in front of him, producing a light tapping sound and then rolling to the floor. The rolling sounded like distant thunder in the dead silence that was four thirty in the morning. He'd have to chat with the foley artist about that tomorrow morning. He could call her, but he didn't think that she'd be awake at this hour. It was too bad, really, Dipper loved four thirty.

The whole world seemed empty. Dipper could walk out of his apartment door and see the lights still on in the gas stations and convenience stores that lined the streets. The dull light from the streetlamps would fall on the hot tar and dying grass. The grass almost glowed against the darkness. There were cashiers in the stores, Wendys who rolled their eyes over the latest issue of Indie Fuzz and sighed, trying to sort out why they even had to work when the whole world was so dead. There was the odd person who decided that it wasn't too bad to exist at four thirty and, sometimes, they'd come in. The Wendys wouldn't smile; they'd just give a half-hearted "hey man, any reason you're still up?"

Because it feels like the world's going so slowly now. It feels like I have time. Dipper would quietly reply to the Wendy, with only the ghost of that nervous smile that had never quite faded even after all the years gone by and all the Mabel-patented-anxiety-therapy.

"Maybe I'll just go outside for a bit," Dipper spoke aloud to no one at all. He turned his light box off with a small snap. He thought about picking up his pencil, but figured it would still be there in the morning. It was already morning, actually, Dipper noted to himself with the smallest chuckle.

See that, Mabel, I don't need everything to be perfect.

He would even leave the door unlocked while he went out. He was halfway down the hall before he froze, panic settling in his chest and quickly seeping up his throat. He bolted back to the door and quickly locked it. Sometimes things had to be perfect.

The wind was cool, rushing through his hair. Even though no one was around, he found himself wishing he had his hat on him. He'd left it in his room at home. It was worn, the colors were faded, and the fabric seemed to be rubbing off along the edges. It wasn't practical to have it, but he wanted it.

He started walking along the worn sidewalk, hands in his pockets and his face turned to the sky. The sky was a deep blue with infrequent stars sprinkled throughout. The stars were spread so far apart and Dipper couldn't discern a single constellation. He remembered knowing a lot about stars in his childhood, but most of it had slipped from his mind. Outside of the dippers, which he remembered for rather obvious reasons, he really couldn't name any constellations anymore.

There was something about that that made him a little sad. He felt like he'd disappointed himself somehow. His nervous, fact-hoarding twelve-year-old self who was certain that there were worlds within and beyond those stars he'd always looked up at. With UFOs in between, of course. They were hiding in between the stars, using technology that humans could not fathom to make them entirely invisible.

Dipper tried to remember if he'd ever met aliens. He probably had. Anything could happen in Gravity Falls, and it often did.

He missed being there. He could always call, maybe Soos would answer. Or Mabel. He hadn't talked with her for a long time and it felt so weird. He was still a little jealous that her college was so close to Gravity Falls that she could just live there. Dipper just had to go to art school.

Which reminded him of the animation project he was supposed to be working on. It needed to be completed in a couple more days and he just didn't know what to do with it.

But all he could think about was Gravity Falls. And he didn't think that he could ever capture the sheer wonder, the enormity of that small, backwoods town. The way the trees poked at the sky in all the right places. The way you could see about a million stars on summer nights. The fact that all of the mysteries of the world seemed to have their very heart in that town and you could hear that heart beating so loudly. It could drown out the sound of Grunkle Stan trying to sell his cheap tricks. He could never understand why Stan chose to live like that when he was surrounded by such real wonder.

That's why he ached so badly to make it real for others. He wanted to have his own tour, to capture that world perfectly, and then stretch his arms out and shout "I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, the most amazing thing you could ever behold in your life: the mysteries of Gravity Falls."

But it was so impossible to wrap them up in his ink and paper box, draw them at a rate of twenty-four frames per second, and hand them over to a world that would believe that they were as fake as a display in the Mystery Shack.

He had one minute and thirty seconds to fill and he wanted to put into them years and years of the best summers of his life. He'd tried to write about those summers, but those adventures had been a strain on his notebooks. They'd be stuffed to bursting, the spine brittle and cracking in places, before he'd even got to the best parts. He'd tried typing them up, but it wasn't like a notebook, where he could write and draw and paste pictures all in one place. He could write a blog, perhaps. Though that wouldn't finish his project.

Something small. He wasn't quite ready to let that whole other world out of his head yet. He was too much of a perfectionist. He could just do a bit with Waddles getting into a bunch of Waddles-antics. Mabel would like that and her birthday was coming up soon, so he could just pretend he'd made it for her as present in his freetime.

It hit Dipper that it would be his birthday as well. Twenty years old. That was just crazy.

Because at four thirty in the morning, with the sky dark, and the early summer wind blowing in his hair, he didn't feel like any time had passed since he was twelve. He knew he was different, his head stuffed with years of information and experience, but he felt the same.

There was a smallness that he felt on the side of that empty road. The same that he'd felt standing alone in the woods, surrounded by trees with shining eyes interspersed like clusters of stars in the darkness. He was just a kid staring into out into the dark woods, awe glowing in his eyes and fear pumping his heart, making it go faster and faster. Maybe he was in some sort of crazy time skip and when he opened the door to his apartment, he'd find himself in his room in the Mystery Shack, at the very start of the best summer of his life.

_Writer's woes: I am in love with Gravity Falls. I love the mystery and the humor, but what I love most would have to be the characters. It is fantastic that they are allowed to laugh at their own jokes, and have fun, and be both good and bad people at the same time. They feel very three dimensional and that is a vibe I haven't gotten from the Disney Channel in a long time. _

_This chapter wasn't supposed to be the first chapter. At all. I have tons of ideas and I wanted something that was more thematic to be the first chapter. Something that would be fully in tune with what I want to do with this oneshot collection. However, this is what was done and I think that I should just start this collection before it gets buried under all of my lifey things. _

_This chapter is going for a sort of __future Dipper thing. I've actually wondered about what Dipper and Mabel would be like when they're older (because I'm in college now and need to relate my experience to something) and I have loads of wacky headcanons that try to reconcile the characters with the people they're based off of. I was thinking that Dipper might end up being a cartoonist/animator like Alex Hirsch and this weird Dipper in art school thing happened. There's an undertone of serious anxiety in this, which comes much more from me. I see a lot of me in Dipper... I also just feel like his anxiety seems really severe!_

_I might do a chapter about Mabel in school to become a therapist/just being a therapist to show my reasoning for how she might grow up to resemble Ariel Hirsch more than she thinks she will. Okay ...I watched the GF Gossiper interview with her and I was just so charmed. I don't know, this is all weird, isn't it?_

_Stay silly, _

_~Hillary _


	3. Being Weird

It wasn't that she didn't hear the laughter. There was no way she couldn't. It was so loud and sharp, and so obviously directed at her, that it was a miracle that she was walking down the hall as calmly as she was. Mabel was concentrating on making sure that each step landed perfectly in the next square tile of floor in front of her. No overstepping, no stepping on the cracks in between, and only one foot in each square. Mabel kept her eyes on the blue and white squares, because, that way, it was much easier to pretend that the universe was in order.

Mabel realized that she wasn't particularly fond of the way the tiled universe was arranged. Twelve inch by twelve inch squares of alternating blue and white, bumping against the walls and rushing down the other halls, a pixelated river. It was a rather boring pattern. She'd made much more exciting universes from the tangrams she'd been given in second grade. Flaming red flowers that spread out into yellow fields that faded into green and blue skies. All made of triangles, rhombuses, and hexagons.

Maybe Mabel shouldn't blame the guys who had lined up all those tiles. They were only working with squares.

It was Halloween and Halloween was Mabel's favorite day of October, maybe even her favorite day of the whole year. She'd woken up a whole hour earlier than normal that morning, putting the final touches on her costume. She'd even laid Dipper's costume over his desk chair, surprised that he wasn't awake and scribbling away in his journal, as he did every morning. Mabel grinned, relishing in the fact that she was just _that_ early.

She realized that she had time to go on the Internet and look up knitting patterns or scroll down pages filled with pictures of adorable pigs. As she walked into the living room, she found herself drawn to her knitting basket. She would not be going on the Internet this morning.

Dipper awoke to the sound of fervent needle-clicking. He found Mabel in the living room, sitting upside-down in an armchair and somehow managing to knit. Gravity was pushing the beginnings of a sweater sleeve into her face, but she was not at all perturbed. She was even managing to focus on whatever TV show she had decided to put on as background noise. An animated ghost danced around the screen, explaining simple words in a slow, clear voice.

Dipper smiled. Mabel was watching educational cartoons and knitting upside-down.

The world was just right.

She'd caught a glimpse of the girls when she'd walked through the school door, all congregated around lockers that weren't even theirs. It was the best seat in the house and the girls clearly wanted the show to start as soon as possible.

They had started laughing the moment Mabel had walked in. It wasn't her costume, though part of Mabel knew that most twelve-year-old girls did not dress up as jam jars for Halloween.

The two girls in the center of the circle were wearing bright colored sweaters and mismatched neon headbands. The sweaters had pictures taped onto them. A rainbow snow cone and an elephant balanced on a tiny teapot. The girls had decided to be Mabel Pines for Halloween. And it wasn't because they thought Mabel was cute or charming. She could tell that in the way they laughed the moment they saw her walk in, the way they made she that she had seen them.

They did it because they thought she was weird. They thought she was a joke.

She'd smiled at them and ducked her head, not even bothering to make some stupid comment to relieve the tension. It would just make her feel worse.

"Do you want me to punch them in the face?" Dipper spoke up, his face hidden behind his journal. Mabel didn't answer, taking a bite of her apple and listening to the sound of Dipper's pen scratching against the thick paper.

"Am I weird?"

"Well, you're pretty silly, Mabel."

"And that's not like crazy bonkers weird or anything, right?" She was gesticulating madly, her sweater sleeves flapping with her wild movements.

"It's not exactly normal, but that's not a bad thing."

"Dipper, that's not even how you answer a question! You're supposed to be like 'Yes, Mabel, you've been clinically diagnosed with chronic weird.'"

Dipper put his notebook away in his vest pocket. He kept his pen, twirling it around in his fingers and clicking it open and shut as he looked across the table at her.

"And you want to be normal?" Dipper raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ahh! It's not like that!" Mabel flailed. "I just don't want to be a joke. I mean it's one thing to be good weird and make great jokes that everybody laughs at, but it's no fun being one."

"I mean, I don't think you're a joke. And I know you remember Quentin Trembley. Everybody thought he was silly and, I mean he was, but he was totally brilliant!"

"I know! I just feel bad right now, okay? And there isn't anything anyone can do about it."

"Be that as it may, but I'd like to take this time to point out that they will not get half as much candy as we will tonight," Dipper grinned and tossed his pen into the air, planning on catching it and looking totally awesome while doing so, but he fumbled the catch and the pen fell under the table with a clatter. "Come on!"

"Really, Dipper, you've got to pay a-pen-tion!"

"That's not even a pun, Mabel!" Dipper crossed his arms, his forced frown twitching upwards at the edges.

"That's because you're a dork and you don't understand real puns!"

The bell rang, signalling the end of lunchtime.

"Well, see ya, Dip!" Mabel waved, still laughing a little.

"Don't worry about those girls; they're just big jerks," Dipper commented seriously, then waved and headed off to his class.

Mabel picked up her bag and wondered how the rest of the day would go. She thought about calling Grenda and Candy later, knowing they would understand and that she'd be able to talk it through with them. She wouldn't let those girls ruin Halloween.

_Writer's Woes: Well, I'm not sure if this really fits with the collection and it probably needs editing but I wanted to update. So yeah. I haven't quite experienced this level of bullying, but I definitely put a bit of my experience into this chapter, in more of an emotional way than anything._

_Stay strange,  
_

_Hillary _


	4. Ham

"I'm not eating Waddles!" Mabel crossed her arms, glaring at both her brother and great uncle in turn. The way she snapped her head as she turned to look at each of them in turn was more hilarious than it was threatening, Stan thought. Kids...

"Mabel, it's not Waddles. Waddles is over there, trying to eat my- my notebook! Waddles, put it down! No, stoooooop!" Stan hoped that Dipper wouldn't start crying or anything. He could barely handle the whole taking care of kids when they were emotionally sound thing.

"But it could be his brother or his Aunt Margaret! I don't wanna eat Waddles' family!"

"Okay then, don't eat it!" Dipper shouted as he tried to wrench his precious notebook from Waddles' slobbery jaws.

"But I'm so hungry! What else am I supposed to eat?" Mabel looked down at her plate for a moment, then sighed and pushed it away. "I'm not eating," she concluded dramatically, leaping up from her seat.

"Uh, wait, sit down. I'll make you some peanut butter and jelly or something," Stan said awkwardly, getting up from his own seat, "And I can just take yours."

Dipper tugged on his notebook, but it slipped from his fingers and he ended up falling on his rear in front of Waddles, who was gleefully salivating all over his notebook. Mabel got up and crouched in front of the pig.

"Waddles, give Dippy his notebook back," Mabel spoke softly, petting Waddles on the head. Waddles dropped the notebook into her outstretched hand without so much as a single grunt in protest.

"I, uh, had some trouble with the bread," Stan muttered, dropping the plate on Mabel's hand knit placemat. Wide ridges had formed on the surface of the Great Breadlands, but it looked edible. The things he did for these kids...

"Aw, see Dipper, Grunkle Stan does love us," Mabel waved her hands in the air and performed some sort of victory dance as she slid into her chair.

"Looks like it," Dipper laughed, hugging his drool-encrusted notebook to his chest.

"Just don't go telling anybody."

Writer's woes: I'm actually eating a ham sandwich as I post this! Despite my obvious meat-eating disposition, I can totally see Mabel being/becoming a vegetarian. I hope Stan isn't too ooc. I spent a lot of last week watching my own niece and nephew so I tried to put a little bit of that you-annoy-me-but-I-love-you attitude into it. I feel like Dipper and Mabel would be a lot easier to take care of because they're much older than my niece and nephew!

Stay strange,

Hillary


End file.
